Ritchie Valens' high school sweetheart still vividly remembers the moment in the fall of 1958 when she first heard the ballad "Donna" that Valens had written for her. Donna Fox (then Donna Ludwig) was 15 years old and driving in her Ford convertible with her girlfriends.
"The DJ said, 'Ritchie Valens new record' and it started out 'Oh Donna' and everybody in the car -- I probably had six girls in the car, at least five -- and they all started screaming so I actually didn't really even hear the song the first time. I kept on telling everybody to be quiet."

Although Ritchie had told her on the phone he'd written a song for her, Fox had no idea he was going to record it.

"It was a total surprise when I heard it on the radio," she said.

Fox remembers Valens as a nice gentle boy who loved his family. Her conservative father, however, didn't approve of her dating him. The year was 1958 in the San Fernando Valley.

"Of course, I didn't tell my father, but I would go out anyway. You did what you had to do," she said.

Even after Valens' meteoric rise to fame, he continued to call her from gigs on the road. Then on Feb. 3, 1959, while Valens and fellow musicians Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper were on the Winter Dance Party tour, their plane crashed into an Iowa corn field. Valens was only 17.

Fox remembers hearing about it from a girlfriend at school who had just heard it on the radio.

"It was kind of like somebody hit you in the mouth," Fox said. "I was
16. I had never experienced death before in my whole life."

Fox went on to marry and have two daughters. Today, she is the branch manager of a mortgage business in Sacramento, and she has a 13-year-old grandson. Yet her relationship with Valens continues to affect her life, she said, and she's still close to Valens' four siblings.